Prologue for an untitled novel in progress

     The following is the prologue for a novel I am working on. It is very early in the process, and I have only a handful of chapters. The prologue takes place a very long time ago, but the bulk of the story will take place in modern time. The main character is a single mom professor in archeology but will be pulled back into the field when a discovery places hunting traps centuries too early in the past. Think a Dan Brown style thriller based in science.

    If anyone is interested in being a beta reader on any of my projects, please email me at jwoolardstories@gmail.com

UNTITLED

Prologue

The sky was grey, and the birds were silent. Talneer was crouched, checking a snare that was set off but held no dinner. An itch at the back of his thoughts warned him that something felt off, but he ignored it. He has hunted and tracked through these mountain passes since he was a boy and was now so old he could not even remember his own age.

The snare had no fur or blood on it so maybe it was not set well enough. Talneer silently laughs off that though. He had set so many traps in his long life that he could do it with his eyes closed and one-handed. No, just some animal got lucky.

A snap of a branch breaking off a distant tree pulled Talneer’s attention from the snare. He crouched silently for a few minutes but saw no noisy flocking of birds disturbed from the fallen branch. Something was wrong, the itch screamed at him.

He had not lived this long by ignoring that itch, so he pulled the snare and its support rod from the ground and pushed it into the animal hide pack on his back and stood. His knees ached but no more than yesterday, so he ignored it. Someday the ache will prevent him from walking the miles of his trap path, but not today. He is midway through his daily trek so the furthest from his cave but decided to leave any further traps until tomorrow and headed for a pass that would get him home in about the time it takes the sun to move two of its own width in the sky.

After a mile, Talneer stopped to pull the bladder from his pack and drank the captured river water. He was worried and did not want to stop for too long because he had still not heard a single natural sound. Sounds that had become the background of his long life. The silence was wrong, and it actually hurt his head. It made his thoughts dangerous. He wanted to run home and hide in his cave, but he must resist because branches or holes unseen were more dangerous than any animal in these mountains.

He put the bladder back and checked the sky for the sun’s position but was distracted by lines of smoke streaked across the gray sky. Talneer stared in wonder. Every fire he had ever seen, the smoke rose and danced in the wind before spreading out and being lost. These were ribbons across the sky. A sudden flash of light drew his gaze toward where the sun would start its journey, and a red fire flew across the sky leaving behind a thicker ribbon of smoke. His thoughts suggested this one was closer than the others and should hurry home. Instead, Talneer watched the fire’s slow journey across the sky. It appeared to be heading toward Bear Mountain, where Talneer had learned not to trap since the bears were smart enough to wait for a smaller animal to be snared and feasted on a free dinner.

He watched the flying fire as it appeared to grow in speed and crashed into the mountain. The fire was so powerful and expelled so much material there was nothing in his experience to relate it to and was not prepared when a second later a wall of hot air lifted him from his feet and threw him to the ground five paces back. The pain in his knees forgotten to the sudden pain in his back.

It became harder to breathe but he knew he needed to get up and run to his cave. There had been many lines of smoke in the air, so it was logical the one that hit Bear Mountain only demonstrated they were getting closer.

Standing, ignoring the too thick and hot air, he ran toward his cave. The thick air made Talneer lose where the sun was, but he knew these passes as well as he did his own hands and remained on the natural path. Usually. The occasional blast of hot air would knock him a few paces from the pass but each time he would get up and ignore the new pains. He lost track of how long he had been running and often thanked the spirits for helping him avoid fallen branches and holes.

His side was aching from the hard breathing running brought on and he thought he could not go on longer but soon he passed a familiar tree standing tall and proud despite a lightning strike long before Talneer was born in the cave fifty paces from its trunk.

The cave was dark but that was not unusual, the mouth opened to a quick turn that opened into the small cavern, what Talneer called home. There was only one pile of pelts toward the back where he sleeps, alone. It had been at least ten full season cycles since his mate had died. The nomads who visited every cycle gave up asking him to leave his confining cave behind and travel with them. But they do not look the same as him, though a few look as if they may be similar. It was not that, though, that stopped him. This is the only cave he has known. When he was born there were eleven like him. He was the last.

Talneer huddled, scared among his pelts as if he was a newling just off his mother’s back and too scared to walk for himself. The cave shook and dirt rained to the cave floor as one of the sky-fires must have hit somewhere closer.

The echo through the cave was deafening and Talneer covered his ears with his age-dried hands. Then the cave collapsed.